


honey, i won't lie to you

by floralathena



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, Supernatural Illnesses, this fic is basically just "the gang gets quarantined" except it's nothing like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 05:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19350688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralathena/pseuds/floralathena
Summary: "At the very least, we should try to narrow things down so that we aren't flying blind. So... what do we know?"Jonathan flips through the notebook. "All we have is that they're planning to develop it for use against enemy soldiers in combat. It's probably not airborne, or we'd all be infected by now."Nancy takes the notebook back. "It's not your average virus, or else they wouldn't be bothering with it. Symptoms are probably going to be weird- think less coughing and sneezing, more… hallucinations and levitating, I don't know.""Coughing and sneezing are usually how diseases spread," Dustin chimes in. "If it doesn't have that, it's got to spread some other way. Like bodily fluids.""Ew," Max says.Lucas nods. "Ew."





	honey, i won't lie to you

“One of us is infected.”

Steve sits on his mother’s favorite sofa, staring at Mike Wheeler’s dirty sneakers on her pristine carpet, and wonders why he’s surprised by anything at this point.

“Infected?” Joyce Byers asks. She’s looking at Nancy and Steve can’t really read her face. He doesn’t need to, to know that she’s afraid. He can hear it in her voice, fatigued and falsely even.

Nancy Wheeler is holding a mini notebook filled alternately with color-coded bullet points and mad, off-kilter scribblings. Her investigative notebook looks a lot like her World History notebook, though it’s missing long-erased pencil indentations from the jokes, drawings, and pickup lines that Steve would scrawl in the margins on study dates. He’s not really allowed around her notebooks anymore. 

Jonathan stands next to her, face sober and eyes scanning the room. He avoids looking at Steve.

The two of them- Nancy and Jonathan, not Jonathan and Steve- have been doing a bit of investigation on the side. Steve can’t really judge. He’s been doing the same thing with Dustin on his breaks, and he probably would have tagged along with Nancy and Jonathan had he not been stuck in a sailor suit for the past few weeks. Not because he’s an idiot who wants to invite the government to snipe him or throw a bag over his head and rip out his fingernails, but because he loves a few idiots who feel compelled to invite the government to snipe them or throw bags over their heads and rip out their fingernails. 

“We’ve been doing a bit of digging-” and Steve doesn’t know how Nancy manages to keep talking when faced with that look from Chief Hopper, but she soldiers on. “-and the lab’s not done. Not by a long shot. We don’t have time to get into all of it-”

“But we have time to be herded into Steve’s house?” Mike asks.

“Shoes off the carpet,” Steve says. Mike gives him a look of contempt before yanking off his shoes and tossing them just beyond the rug and onto the hardwood floor.

“We’re here for a reason,” Jonathan says, and that’s Nancy’s cue to take back control.

“Like I  _ said _ , we don’t have time to get into all of it, but we have an informant. There’s a disease, something from the Upside Down, and the lab has it under containment.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Dustin asks, “That they’ve contained it?”

“Not when the government’s trying to get into biological warfare,” Nancy says.

“And it’s really not good when they need a convenient population to test it on,” Jonathan adds grimly.

Despite the potentially world-ending threat, Steve is impressed. They make a good team, and as terrifying as their intel is, he feels lucky that they’ve got it. Nancy isn’t the kind of person who’s content to put her head down and let life happen to her. She’s brave in a way that Steve has never been. Her expression is stony, and Jonathan seems strengthened by her presence. Steve gets how he feels.

“You said one of us is infected. Makes it sound like you don’t know who,” Hopper says carefully. 

Nancy sighs and sits down hard in the antique loveseat that Steve wasn’t even allowed to look at until high school. “That’s because we don’t.” 

Jonathan sits down on the arm of the loveseat, the solid mahogany arm with genuine vintage upholstery, and Steve can almost smile. Then he realizes that Jonathan might be slowly dying of some hell-dimension disease and a chill runs down his spine. Dustin, sitting to his right, leans into him. It’s clearly a gesture meant to comfort, but it just makes Steve realize that Dustin could be infected too, and suddenly he wants to throw up. Instead, he puts an arm around Dustin and squeezes.

It’s silent for a moment, and Steve lets himself squeeze Dustin just a little bit too hard.

“Do we know what this thing does?” Joyce asks. Her voice is quiet, but when Steve looks over to where she and the Chief are standing, she looks determined. Nobody in the room will let anyone else go without a fight, but Steve’s pretty sure that Joyce Byers could bring any of them back from the dead through sheer force of will if she set her mind on it. From what he hears about everything that Will went through, she’s done it once before. 

“Whatever it is, it’s not good. Our informant said that we’d be seeing it soon-”

“What  _ exactly _ did they say?” Hopper asks gruffly. 

Jonathan tenses and takes the notebook from Nancy. His hands are shaking. "We were asking questions, what the symptoms were, how it spread, you know. He said, you'll see for yourselves soon enough. One of you is already infected. Then he, uh, laughed.”

Will speaks up. “Like an evil villain?”

“Not exactly,” Nancy says, as Jonathan says, “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Huh.”

It takes a couple seconds of everybody looking at him for Steve to realize that he’s the one who spoke.

"So… they know. Does that mean that they…" he trails off. 

"Did it on purpose? Yeah. Yeah, I think so." Nancy's jaw clenches.

Hopper huffs. "He said one of you. Did you consider that maybe he meant you two?"  

Jonathan rubs his neck. "We did. It's what we thought at first, actually, but the way he said it just… He referenced our group once before. Maybe he just meant me and Nance, but in case he didn't…"

"We need to look at everybody," Nancy says. 

"Now, look, the last thing we need is to turn this into a witch hunt-" Hopper starts.

Joyce cuts him off. "The last thing we need is for everyone to get infected before we even know what's happening." 

Their eye contact is intense, and Steve is suddenly reminded of his family dinner this past Sunday. His father had demanded it, and it wasn't half as bad as Steve had expected it to be. His mom made a stir-fry. His dad asked him about work, and Nancy, and whether he's been running lately. It had been okay until his mom said something about the importance of genuine, quality family time, and then they had stared at each other much like Joyce and Hopper are now before his mother stood abruptly to take their plates. Steve hadn't been finished eating, but he chugged the rest of his water and went up to bed anyway.

Hopper relents. "Okay. At the very least, we should try to narrow things down so that we aren't flying blind. So... what do we know?"

Jonathan flips through the notebook. "All we have is that they're planning to develop it for use against enemy soldiers in combat. It's probably not airborne, or we'd all be infected by now."

Nancy takes the notebook back. "It's not your average virus, or else they wouldn't be bothering with it. Symptoms are probably going to be weird- think less coughing and sneezing, more… hallucinations and levitating, I don't know."

"Coughing and sneezing are usually how diseases spread," Dustin chimes in. "If it doesn't have that, it's got to spread some other way. Like bodily fluids."

"Ew," Max says.

Lucas nods. "Ew." The two have been sitting cross-legged right next to each other on the floor, but they each slide a little bit apart at the mention of bodily fluids.

"Wait, does that mean, like, kissing?" Mike asks. 

"I don't think there's a lot of kissing in the Upside-Down." 

"Uh, there's biting."

"Oh, shit, yeah." 

"But how is it supposed to be a weapon? I don't think soldiers really kiss each other."

"They bleed on each other, dipshit, that's a bodily fluid." 

"Hey, just because I'm not-"

"Are we in danger if we've kissed someone?"

"Kids, we don't know that it's-"

"We kissed today."

"El, not now."

"You guys are gross."

"I don't think this is helping."

"I'm single by choice,  _ Mike _ , I can't let a lady tie down-"

"-shut up-"

"-been acting weird-"

"-don't think it's Will-"

"-Nancy and Jonathan-"

“So, uh, anybody want a glass of water?” Steve stands before anyone can even answer, shoving Dustin’s hat down onto his head as he does so. “Jonathan, Nancy, will you help me?”

Steve doesn't need to look behind him to know that they exchange a look before getting up to follow him. He hears Hopper trying to instill some kind of order. They're all going to think really hard and mention anything they've seen lately that seemed weird. Steve gets the feeling that it isn't going to be very helpful, but the kids start falling over each other presenting theories, and anything that helps them feel in control right now is worth doing in Steve's opinion. He passes by the drinkware cabinet and opens the walk-in pantry. He flicks the light switch.

As soon as they catch up, Steve shoves Nancy, then Jonathan inside, following after them and pulling the door softly closed behind him.

Neither of them seem very surprised. The dim yellow bulb that Steve was supposed to replace a week ago emphasizes the shadows beneath Jonathan's eyes and makes Nancy's makeup look a little ghoulish. He takes their hands, Jonathan's in his left and Nancy's in his right, clenching harder than he should. 

"Why are we here? Why my house?"

Nancy glances at Jonathan before she answers with a question of her own. "Steve, where's your dad right now?" 

"What? What does that have to do with-"

"Steve," Jonathan says softly. His thumb is rubbing Steve's hand. "Nancy has… a theory." 

Steve swallows. "A theory."

"Does he keep his office locked?" 

Steve blinks. "No." 

"Can I search it?" 

Steve looks into her eyes. She's serious. God, as if she would ever joke about this. 

"I... Jesus. Yeah," he says, "You know where it is. I'll… I'll come in a minute, can you just-" 

"Of course," she says, presses a kiss to his hand, and leaves, closing the door behind her. His right hand feels cold. Jonathan squeezes the left.

"Do you agree with her… theory?"

Jonathan looks down. "I don't know. I never would have considered it coming from anyone else, but…" 

"It's Nancy," Steve finishes.

"Yeah," Jonathan says, looking up and meeting Steve's gaze. "She thought your house made sense for the meeting anyway. It's closer to the mall. Figured nobody would be home for a while." He looks like he hates himself a little for saying it.

Steve lets go of Jonathan's hand.

"Steve-"

He lurches forward, wrapping his arms around Jonathan's waist and burying his face in his neck. It's a little awkward, Steve hunched over a little, and they almost topple over onto the Pop-Tarts, but Jonathan grips him back steadily and it feels right.

"What happens?" He mumbles into Jonathan's shirt.

"If she finds something?"

Steve nods. 

"We deal with it together. You've got us, Steve, that isn't going to change." 

It could, though. Everything could. It did before. 

"Our couch is pretty comfortable," Jonathan says, "and it shouldn't be too hard for you to sneak into my room once Mom goes to sleep." 

Steve laughs. "An offer nobody could refuse." He pulls back from the hug slowly. "Thanks. I'd kiss you, but, you know. Just in case. Dustin's usually right about science stuff." 

Jonathan huffs a little. “A bit late for that.”

It's not a laugh, but Steve will take it.

"Let's go," he says, reaching around Steve and leaning into him to open the door. It’s not a kiss, but it’s warm and close and Steve will gladly take it.

They emerge just as the voices from the living room begin to rise. 

“What’s the point in sitting around here trying to figure out who it is? What do we do then?”

“Make sure they can’t infect anybody else.”

“You don’t mean-”

“No! God no, just like, a quarantine-”

“We’re probably all infecting each other anyway.”

“How do we even know that their informant was telling the truth?”

Everything is loud and bright and Steve looks at Jonathan, panicking. 

"Your dad's office," he prompts.

Steve takes a deep breath. "Right." 

They slip by the living room and down a too-short hallway, and there's the door. It's cracked open. His father never leaves the door open. Jonathan pushes it for him and Steve half-expects to see his father standing there, wearing a full suit even though he’s at home. 

"Steve, do you know the safe combination?" 

Nancy is crouched under his father's desk.

"I didn't know he had a safe in here," he replies. He glances around, drinking in the details. There aren’t many. Everything on the wall is generic and tasteful, and the flooring is just the same as it is in the hallway, no rugs to be seen. His father’s desk is clean and orderly.

"Shit," Nancy whispers to herself before returning to speaking volume. "I already tried your birthday."

"Well, I could have told you that wouldn't work. Try 6-19-39." 

The room is silent save for the light sound of a combination lock spinning.

"That worked! Your mom's birthday?"

"No," Steve says, "His."

Jonathan's face says more than Steve could ever say with words. 

"What is it?" Jonathan asks. Unlike Steve, he cranes his neck a little to peer over the desk and catch a glimpse of whatever lies in Nancy’s hands. That's the difference, Steve thinks, between him and them. They’ve always been the ones with the guts to stare the truth in the face. 

Nancy stands slowly, holding a manila envelope thick with papers. She's staring at something on the first page. 

Her eyes are shining.

"Nancy," Steve manages. His voice wavers, fluttering through the air like a tissue ready to be ripped apart. 

She closes her eyes, and when she opens them the shine is gone. They were wet, Steve realizes.

"I'm so sorry," she says softly, shaking her head so subtly that Steve thinks he might be imagining it. She's still looking at the paper.

"Jesus," Jonathan whispers. Steve doesn't know when he grabbed his hand again, but he's holding on to it like a lifeline.

"Huh," Steve says. "Shitty security." He feels as if he's going to explode like the styrofoam cooler that Tommy once filled with bottle rockets and cherry bombs for the Fourth of July. He feels equally as though he might just sag to the floor like a deflated bouncy castle. It's weird, because he usually only feels this off-balance in life-or-death situations, and in life-or-death situations he always has something to hit and somebody to protect, but right now it's just him, and Nancy, and Jonathan, and a manila envelope that means everything has changed. 

Nancy is standing by his dad's desk and then she isn't. Steve is standing up until he isn't. Jonathan's hand is still there. Nancy drops the folder to cling to him, and it sits there on the wood floor in his line of sight like nothing's wrong, like it didn't just kill him. 

Steve counts to ten. He breathes. "How bad is it?" 

"They're mostly redacted, but… he has a lot of information here."

They don't give out that kind of information to guys that are only sort of involved. Government lab work is a need-to-know kind of business. Apparently Steve's father needs to know. 

Nancy smells like Faberge Organics and Farrah Fawcett hairspray. He wants to scream. 

"Hey, guys, Hopper's getting- woah! Steve! Shit, oh my god, what's happening-"

"I'm fine," Steve calls out. His back is to the door and some selfish part of him is glad not to have seen the terror that he knows was just written across Dustin's face. "Tell Hopper we'll be right there." 

“Are you sure?”

Steve hears Dustin leave before he’s able to muster up a response. He thanks God and Karen Wheeler for blessing Nancy with such silent ferocity.

“We need to show this to Hopper,” he says.

“Steve-” Nancy starts.

“Later, Nance. Okay? Just… I can’t. Not today.” Steve stands slowly. Jonathan and Nancy each keep both hands on him as he rises. He tries to focus on them and ignore whatever’s swirling in his chest. 

Jonathan leads the way without needing to be asked. 

“It’s  _ Steve _ , he fought off a demogorgon!”

“Yeah, and he also got knocked out by Billy-”

“Who cheated!”

“Dustin,” Steve says, “Chill out.”

Nobody is sitting down anymore. Steve feels sick as they all look to him in concern.

He turns around and takes the folder from Nancy.

“It was in his office,” he says, handing it over to Joyce.

Time can be weird. Reality can be even weirder. Fighting Billy felt like it was over in a flash, even though in the thick of it, it seemed like it would never end. Sometimes Steve feels like he lived an entire lifetime in those tunnels, and other times he thinks they must have been just a bad dream. His and Nancy’s first kiss was over before it even started, and his and Jonathan’s lasted at least a week. That conversation on the hood of Steve’s car where his whole world shifted and he finally belonged might have taken three minutes or three hours. 

Steve doesn’t really know how long Joyce reads before she gasps. He never looks at the file himself. Watching her and Hopper is enough. Confusion, anger, sadness, and a dozen other emotions that Steve couldn’t name if he wanted to float across their faces and shift with every page. It’s all awful until they look up at him, and then it’s unbearable. They share another look, one that’s nothing like anything he’s seen between his parents.

“You were right,” Hopper says, breaking the tense silence. “Bodily fluids.”

“Does that mean-”

“He works for them,” Steve interrupts Dustin.

Dustin looks almost as afraid as Steve feels. He thinks this is fear. Whatever it is, it’s hot and ugly and it’s settling inside of him like it doesn’t plan to move for a while. 

“Steve…” Joyce says.

“It’s okay. Don’t- don’t worry about me, worry about the files. What is it? What does it do? Can we cure it?”

“Who has it?” Lucas adds.

“It works slow,” Hopper says. “Attacks the mind. Slowly drives you crazy. There’s no physical symptoms until it’s too late.”

Too late.

“They’ve been working on a cure,” Joyce says. “These documents say it’s nearly finished, and they’re about a week old.”

“Do they say who it is?” Max urges her. 

Joyce and Hopper share another look. “Kids, maybe you should-”

“What? No way!”

“We have just as much of a right-”

“It’s me,” Steve says flatly. “Isn’t it?”

He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget the absolute heartbreak on Joyce’s face. Hopper’s face is gut wrenching too, but in a different way. There’s something else in his eyes. If Steve didn’t know any better, he’d call it rage. 

“Well,” Steve says dryly, “Now I know why he wanted to have Sunday dinner.” 

“Oh,” he hears. It’s small and scared. Dustin is looking at him, eyes wide and lips trembling. Lucas and Max don’t look much better. They’re clinging to each other and Max’s eyes look watery.

“Seems your old man isn’t up to date on your love life,” Hopper says awkwardly. “The plan was for you to spread it to Wheeler.”

Bodily fluids. 

Steve’s blood runs cold as the hot, ugly thing within him heats to a boil.

“Well that’s… that’s good, right?” Dustin says. “It’s just Steve, and everybody else is okay, and we can find the cure for him.”

“Sunday,” Nancy says. 

Mike frowns at her. “What?”

“It’s not just Steve.”

He looks at her in confusion for a second before it clicks.

Steve can almost hear the bombs dropping. The hot, ugly thing screams at him like a kettle.

“Yikes,” Max says.

“Oh my god,” Dustin mumbles.

Mike is looking at Steve like he can’t wait for the disease to kill him.

“Nancy, how could you-” Will says, and holy  _ shit  _ Steve has never seen the kid so heated. It distracts him from the ugliness for a little bit, to see sweet Will turn mean for Jonathan’s sake.

“It’s okay!” Jonathan rushes to say, “It’s okay, Will, I know, it’s cool.”

“What?” Steve isn’t sure that poor El even knows who he is, but she’s doing her best to keep up.

Dustin facepalms loudly, the slap seeming to echo. “Wait, if Steve gave it to Nancy then Nancy could have given it to you!”

“Um… yeah. I guess. Uh, probably.” Jonathan says lamely. He crosses his arms. 

Hopper groans. “Oh, good Lord.”

“You’re just okay with that?!” Will says incredulously.

“Will, sweetie-”

“Well, I’m not exactly thrilled about being slowly driven crazy by a disease from another dimension, but, you know. What’s done is done.”

“What’s  _ done _ is  _ done _ ?! Jonathan, they-”

His chest is bubbling and the kettle is screaming and Steve can’t take it anymore.

So he grabs Jonathan by the shoulders, spins him around, and kisses him.

The kettle keeps screaming, but the heat in his chest seems to disperse for a moment, spreading through his arms and legs and rushing to his head, leaving him dizzy and gasping for air. Jonathan’s hands are on his face, soft and careful and larger than Nancy’s. 

He pulls back and doesn’t spare a moment before pulling Nancy in. This one is harder and her hands grip his arms, strong and desperate and smaller than Jonathan’s. He has to pull back sooner, his head spinning and ears ringing. 

“He’s already gone crazy,” Lucas whispers to Max, who smacks him lightly on the arm. 

Joyce clears her throat and shuffles the files around in her hands, closing the manila folder. “We’ll… talk about this later.”

“If we don’t die, I’m going to kill you,” Jonathan says, and Steve grins.

Will seems to be his usual self again, albeit much more confused than usual. “Well… now what do we do?” 

Steve scans the room. Everybody is looking at him. At them. He takes Jonathan’s and Nancy’s hands in his own.

“That’s easy,” he says with feigned confidence. “We kill my dad.”

“And find the cure,” Nancy adds.

“And kill Steve’s dad.” Jonathan finishes.

The ugly thing in his chest seems to be losing the battle as Dustin looks at him with something like pride. 

“That works for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from "nobody" by hozier!
> 
> as always, i'm contractually obligated to thank my beautiful genius friend sarah (@bi-harrington on tumblr and @mjolnirbreaker on ao3) for providing encouragement, ideas, a sick writing playlist, and a nifty psychic connection. i had a blast writing this fic and it's not meant to be taken too seriously! i hope you had fun reading it!
> 
> many ideas went into this fic, such as "what if stranger things had a sort of bottle episode," "what if the monster hunting trio was together and they revealed their relationship in the most dramatic way possible," and "i want all three of them to kill steve's dad as a date." if you want to talk, i'm @discosteves on tumblr, and my ask is always open!!


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